A new site has launched yet again, and this time it's an Australian one. The site looks very... orange, but it's good. The webmaster, or webmistress really, has been making stuff for the past six months, and now she's launched her own site after her friend told her to. Thanks to the 6 months of designing, this site doesn't start off completely empty: there are 3 skins and a couple of objects (a wooden study set) available. This site is very nice and you should pay them a visit. Note that the actual site loads up in a popup window (after clicking the splash image), so if you have a popup blocker you might have to disable it. Here's their address, in case you want to bookmark it: www.swellsims.com.

Yes, it's true! We've won a Sim Emmy from the Sim Emmy Awards site. It's for the Best News/Info site which proves you should really come here to find out all the latest news about The Sims. As our info is always expanding too (currently we're adding a career index in the extras), you should really be here for info about the several Sims games too. Previous winners of this award were Sim Programs and
SIManic Weekly. You can check out all this month's winners at this page. Thank you for everybody who voted for us!

TSR will be celebrating their 50,000th (!) file in their databases next weekend. A lot of new files will be posted to get over 50,000 files in total. 10,000 files will be free, no subscription necessary, and there will be free prize draws for everybody who visits TSR during the event weekend. You can win a Sims Expansion pack of your own choice, just in case you still need to complete your collection. Besides all that they will publish some exclusive Skins and Furniture sets, and SimsDaily will be launched, which is their new TSO Fanzine. To make things even better, like a Sims Knowledge Quiz. Everybody can participate with that, and prizes will be given away. 2 hours later (22:00 British Time, 23:00 in Europe, 15:00 in New York) there will be a Sims 2 chat event, where they will talk about The Sims 2. TSR staff will be attending the chat, but nothing is mentioned of Maxis people. On Sunday TSR will end with a Superstar chat event, at 20:00 London time (21:00 in Europe, 13:00 in New York). For more information about all the events, visit The Sims Resource.

The people of SimGateway have launched a new site, called SimsConnect. This site will contain SimGateway's forums (which obviously have moved there). That means there are already quite some members on the forums, and they're already well-visited. But with the move comes one new feature too: e-mail addresses for users. You can get an @SimsConnect.com e-mail address for free, with 5 mb storage space and web-access to your mail (no POP or IMAP support yet, that might come in the future). The design of the forums hasn't changed yet, but Ted's planning to change that sooner or later. It's worth to check out, and if you want a new email address that's a nice place to get one.

SimLane has offered two methods to stop the obsessed fan from hanging around at your house if your Sim is a celebrity. These are on two different sub-sites of SimLane too. The first option comes from Coaster's. It's a free download, and works like the Stray-Away Pet Prevention System (from the official site): you buy a sign, place it somewhere on your lawn (or anywhere else), and the fan will leave your lot as soon as he sees the sign. The other option comes from Maxim's. That download works like the burglar alarm: you place their alarm on your house (which also goes off in case a thief comes near - it has a 40% wider range than the original burglar alarm). Whenever the obsessed fan comes near, the police will come and chase him off the lot. To download the "SimSafety VII Burglar/Fan Alarm", you'll need to pay $1.30 through paypal, but it's worth it. Good luck with getting that obsessed fan out of the way!

A new site with a Latin name ('Vestamentum' means 'Clothing') has recently launched. The creator of this site has been active in the Sims community before, but had her fabulous skins hosted on a site that's now closed down. The skins are all historical. You can download some skins to make your Sims look like if they came from 1445 A.D. to 1885 A.D. Those skins are made with great accuracy and detail, but may look weird sometimes when using them in-game, due to limitations of The Sims. As the webmaster says:

"If you're looking for practical skins in your game, this is not the place. But if your primary interest is in beautiful clothing and careful attention to detail, look no further."

The skins include unique meshes to make the shape of the Sim. The site currently has 10 skins, but will probably get more in the future. Those skins are definately worth downloading if you like to see some history in your Sims game, or if you're designing a castle from the middle-ages and need a family to live in it.